Downhill Slide
by Spencer5460
Summary: Written for the LJ Prompt Fic: Starsky & Hutch - I'm Glad You Stayed


Prompt Fill: Starsky + Hutch: I'm Glad You Stayed

Downhill Slide

On any given day Hutch acts likes he hates my car. He takes every opportunity to put it down. From the way it looks, to the way it sounds, even the way it runs seems to get his goat. He calls it the Striped Tomato. Sometimes he acts like he's not so keen on the way I drive it either. But I don't take it personally. The reality is my Torino is one hell of a car and I'm one hell of a driver. But Hutch is also one hell of a partner.

The other guys in the department may wonder how I can put up with all his griping. That's just Hutch being Hutch. There's something inside Blondie that makes him lash out at things as if he's wanting them to lash back. Like he can't believe he deserves anything good so he tries to hurt them before they can hurt him. Well, he can lash all he wants. I figure if taking potshots at my car and the way I drive is what he needs to fix some part of himself that's broken, the Tomato and I can handle it. He means that much to me.

My big red car and I have chased down plenty of perps and maneuvered us out of too many tight spots to count over the years. But today something happened that I thought even the Tomato and I couldn't get us out of. We had gone up in the hills outside of town to check out the remains of a guy who had happened to have the bad luck of ripping off the wrong person. Now Hutch and I were in the middle of a game called "who's got the money" and it was turning out to be a pretty dangerous game at that. The road back into town was a fairly steep grade. As the Torino picked up speed on the return trip, I pushed down gently on the brake pedal to hold her back. And felt mush. No pressure at all. Nothing. Nada. So she kept picking up speed as we went along. Downhill. And right through a residential neighborhood on top of it all.

At first Hutch didn't notice because he was too busy sorting through the facts of the case, like he was putting together one of those 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles in his head. Except this time the pieces weren't fitting right. But even he couldn't ignore what was happening in the here and now when I nearly side-swiped a car. I tried every trick I knew to slow us down. Even the parking brake wouldn't hold and I'd have given anything if that former Sea Scout partner of mine had had an anchor in his pocket that we could throw out.

We were in deep trouble. My life would have been flashing before my eyes if I weren't concentrating so hard on the road ahead, swerving like a drunk running an obstacle course. This downhill slide could come to no good end. Then it hit me. I was the captain of this ship and it was my responsibility to go down with it, hopefully steering clear of innocent bystanders along the way. But there was no reason for my partner to go down with me. He needed to get out of the car. Now.

"I think you better jump." I told him.

"Don't be funny," he snapped back.

We didn't have time to argue. "Jump! You'll be killed!" I shouted at him this time, trying to make him understand. But did he do it? No. He just yelled back, "You jump."

My partner is as stubborn as they come. Still, I couldn't just sit there and watch him be horribly injured or maybe even die just because he was determined to stick with me. "I'm driving, you jump." I tried to reason with him in a hyped up, adrenalin-fueled way.

"I'll drive, you jump!" He insisted. Now Hutch had been behind the wheel of this beast exactly once and that was just earlier in the day. There was no way he could handle her under these conditions. He knew it and he knew I knew it. In other words, he wasn't leaving me. No way. That's what makes us who we are. Partners, yeah, but something more. Something a lot of people just don't understand. He needs me and I need him. Like scattered fragments of quicksilver that shimmy around kind of lost until they find one another, then just bond together naturally.

So I gripped the wheel, twisting and turning it like a rodeo rider trying to control a deranged bull, while Blondie clung to the seats as we careened downhill for a few more heart-stopping miles until I somehow managed to swing the car around in an open intersection, bringing her to a squealing stop. We sat there for a few minutes gulping oxygen and coming to terms with the fact that we'd just won a deadly game of chicken. And we'd stuck it out together. No breaking up this team.

Now, Hutch staying along for the ride and not leaving me to go it alone is pretty amazing. But what happened next was sweet icing on the cake. Because as I bounded out of the car and looked around to find what had gone wrong he just blurted out a name. "Sarah Kingston." He wasn't thinking of the crazy roller coaster ride we had narrowly escaped or even damage to the car. His mind was still on the puzzle – which he had just solved. And do you know why? Because he had complete confidence in me, his partner. Confidence to bring the car under control, confidence to protect him and me both from injury or even death.

So as much as he complains, I know to listen less to what he says and more to what he does. That's the real Hutch. The one that's deep inside and counts on me to reach down in and pull him out, like magnets drawing together. Sure, I'm glad he stayed, but I'm sticking with him, too.


End file.
